Tried with the floors, but don't understand some of them.
Might mistaken communication and radio room as well as the terms used for the bridges

Did they really have to stack up all the important rooms in one spot?

darkspire91 said:

Did they really have to stack up all the important rooms in one spot?

The Washington Naval Treaty limited the construction of new battleships, so they can only improve their battleships. And to do so they stack them up. Even the Kongou calss and Nagato class have this, just not as high as Fusou.

It's worth pointing out that the reason they remodeled to remove a floor is because the Japanese battleships had such ridiculously tall towers that they were actually at serious risk of capsizing in a stiff wind. After nearly losing several ships (and actually losing a few more) in a typhoon, they tried to remodel away from their absurd stacking scheme.

Comparatively, American battleships are instantly distinguishable compared to the Japanese ones for having a bridge not even half as tall, but generally being a bit broader. See Missouri compared to Yamashiro

laisy said:

The Washington Naval Treaty limited the construction of new battleships, so they can only improve their battleships. And to do so they stack them up. Even the Kongou calss and Nagato class have this, just not as high as Fusou.

The logic for the fuck huge masts was actually originally range finding and visibility. During the 20s and 30s Japan came to acquire a major hard-on for trying to 'outrange' their enemy as part of there attempts to deal with the fact that treaty or not they could never hope to match the US fleet in size. Part of this was going around modifying many of there older ship's guns for higher elevation, the entire 'underwater' shell design was built with the idea that short misses at long range might still hit ships, and of course since all spotting and range finding was optical at the time they started building ridiculously huge masts full of look out points and very highly set rangefinders to try and spot and start ranging the enemy first.

Ultimately experience showed this was all pretty much a waste of effort. Effective fire beyond 25,000 meters just proved flat out impossible with optical system and since US battleship guns could all reach at least 30,000 meters any range advantage was basically illusionary. In point of fact a "range" disparity between ships of about the same class pretty much never factored into a single battle that I can think of during the war.

Also a better comparison between the design of most Japanese and US capital ships would be the US Standards. These were largely similar vintage to all Japanese ships outside the Yamatos, but obviously lacked the giant masts. More then the topside though the big obvious difference is two nations choice of hull forms. The US ships are much stouter and wider due to differing design focus (mostly protection verses speed).

NWSiaCB said:

It's worth pointing out that the reason they remodeled to remove a floor is because the Japanese battleships had such ridiculously tall towers that they were actually at serious risk of capsizing in a stiff wind. After nearly losing several ships (and actually losing a few more) in a typhoon, they tried to remodel away from their absurd stacking scheme.

Comparatively, American battleships are instantly distinguishable compared to the Japanese ones for having a bridge not even half as tall, but generally being a bit broader. See Missouri compared to Yamashiro

But of course... [slow clap], did US ever make treaty make them at disadvantage ?

Oh and... If you see more another ships besides you lovely US Battleships...
You can see it clearly... The latest US BB mast design... Based on the Deutchland class cruiser...

100% perfect fits
Especially the admiral graf spee model

LCerberus said:

But of course... [slow clap], did US ever make treaty make them at disadvantage ?

Japan weren't at a disadvantage, all signatories had the same limitations. Just because the US and the UK had more tonnage that didn't equate to a stronger force because the US had two massive coastlines and overseas holdings to patrol and show the flag in, while we in the UK...well, lolBritishEmpire. That means although there were more overall ships, they weren't ever all in the same place at the same time. In fact because of the treaty the US couldn't provide new ships for their Asiatic Fleet, hence them getting spanked in the Phillipines trying to use WW1 era DDs and cruisers and having to rely on ground based air support: all the big stuff was held back for home defence.

There were those in Japan who supported the Washington Naval Treaty as-was on the grounds that without the agreed-to ratio, the US could simply commit to an actual naval race and bury Japan in numbers. Which was basically what happened.